The present invention relates to modeling the heart using medical images, and more particularly, to comprehensive patient-specific modeling of the heart based on 4D medical image data.
Cardiac disease is the leading cause of death for men and women in the United States and accounts no less than 30% of deaths worldwide. Although medical advances in recent years have provided important improvements in the diagnosis and treatment of complex cardiac diseases such as valvular disease, thoracic aortic aneurysm, and Tetralogy of Fallot, the incidence of premature morbidity and morality is still large. Medical imaging modalities, such as computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance (MR), rotational X-ray, and Ultrasound, can be used to acquire large amounts of morphological and functional image data with a high temporal-spatial resolution. However, due to a lag in data understanding capabilities, physicians are forced to make vital decisions based on measurements and methods that are limited in scope. These limitations are at least in part due to the lack of efficient and accurate estimation of patient-specific parameters describing the heart-aortic anatomy, physiology, and hemodynamics, as well as the lack of disease progression models.